PN Featured Artist: Carl Catron

PN Featured Artist: Carl Catron

I’ve featured many artist on PureNintendo.com, painters, sculptors, guitarists, etc. Never did I think I would get a submission as cool and original as this one. Carl Catron is a very talented musician, he uses his awesome skills to create saxophone covers of anime, movie, videogame, and TV themes. Checkout some of his unique covers below and be sure to subscribe to his YouTube channel for more awesome videos. Enjoy!

KD: Hi Carl, can you tell our readers a little bit about yourself and what you do?

CC: Oh hey, I make videogame, TV, Movie, and Anime covers. Essentially I take songs that are from one of those mediums and remix em and make something new. I tend to introduce Hip-Hop, Latin, and Dubstep elements into my work. I don’t think it’s a conscious thing, but more so just a feeling that I try to put in my work. I for years had been doing solely radio hits, but I recently decided I wanted to try this out full-time, and the response has been great so far. Oh, I also put together virtual bands(when I can afford to hahaha), which feature several musicians across the globe playing with me live. I believe the WALKING DEAD video had 16 videos. It was crazy.

KD: How old were you when you first became interested in the saxophone? What drew you in?

CD:I believe I was 10 or 11 years old. It was 5th grade. At the time I was playing the piano or a few years and hating it (I wanna move and get down and participate with my audience, and that’s really hard behind a 400lb immoveable object that you’re stuck at haha). Anyway, one day, Kirk Whalum(Several Grammy wins, and notably at the time, played the saxophone solo for “I Will Always Love You – Whitney Houston”) came to my school, and played for about 20-30 minutes or so for our school. Just him. It was amazing. I knew from that very moment that’s what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, and I ran home and begged my mom day in and day out, and when I finally got to middle school, like 8 months later, I got my chance. I often imagine like man what if I had been absent that day? The life of a musician, who ain’t famous is not terribly easy at all, but I swear I wouldn’t trade my journey for anything. :-)

KD: It seems difficult to play the saxophone. Do you have other musical talents as well?

CC: Difficult, but not impossible. I always say I taught myself, as my early school teachers were drummers. I started out at the very bottom of the class, and graduated high school at the top with awards and trophies. I say it took me about 7 years to get a good “sound” that I liked. Worth the investment, but geez was it an investment hahahaha. As you read earlier, I play the piano. Every music video on my channel, any music you HEAR that you don’t see anyone playing, is performed by me via MIDI. Every single video. And 95% of the music you hear played live, by other musicians I originally played and arranged for them on the piano and then they played it live on their instruments. I have gotten really good at making drums on MIDI in the last 2 years. I could not do that before. But this project starts and ends with me and solely relies on me, and forced me to develop the skills to do that and make tasty bass lines if it was gonna have any hope haha.

KD:What’s your favorite cover that you’ve done so far?

CC: OH BOY this is a tough one. I love almost everything I make. I think I would have to pick a few.

I like the Pokemon theme (Gotta Catch Em All) remix because the Pokemon cartoon was such a big deal to me growing up. I would watch it every morning before school in like middle school. I turned it into a smooth reggae and I really like the feel of that. Another would be my most recent cover of Song of Storms (Legend off Zelda: Ocarina of Time). I think the original is great, I loved the game, and I love the cover I made for it. I put the song in the original time signature of 6/8, and then moved it to 4/4, re-worked the melody, threw in some Dubstep wobbles, and hip hop drum grooves, and then boom, latin drums on the solo, and went to town on the sax. I love how things came out and my only regret is still not having the budget to be able to record in a nice studio or space yet(we’re working on it though).

KD:What’s your favorite Nintendo game or series?

CC:This is a harder question that the last. I was an only child, and I loved, and still love RPG’s, and JRPG’s. I was raised on SNES and I love Nintendo to death. OK…Fire Emblem is my favorite series. I love it. I really do. I hope FATES is amazing, as I sit here waiting in Europe, but so far that’s my Jam. I also really love Super Smash Bros. Series. It’s the only fighting game I’ve ever been any good at and so yeah it deserves a mention. Smash Bros last 2 installments have given me SO MUCH material to cover over the coming years should the Patreon get funded. I’d love to be able to hire an arranger to help me with some of those harder tunes, but geez they really went all out revamping the music in their catalog for Brawl and Smash 4.

KD: Thank you so much Carl. It’s not often that I get to feature a saxophone artist! Where can our readers see more of your videos and do you take requests?

CC:Well you can check me out on youtube of course, and for those who’d like to support the project and it’s development and growth go check out my patreon page. Offering some cool rewards and exclusives there, and everyone gets an even better project in the long run so I mean that’s victory for us all haha. As far as request taking that’s reserved for my patrons at the moment(thanks for keeping the project alive). I have currently, about 10-15 songs in my queue planned…there’s LOTS and LOTS of games out there and only so little time. I likely won’t even get to record all MY favorites, but you better believe I’ll try. I currently make this project at a loss. It’s my sincere hope that it gets funded enough to where I can do this full-time. It would be awesome to be able to just spend my time making arrangements of awesome tunes we all love day in and day out. I’d be able to take way more requests from the community when and if that happens.

http://www.youtube.com/c/CarlCatronThank you so much for having me on. I was also surprised that you accepted my submission but I’m truly honored. The Nintendo community has been great to me and I won’t forget it. Expect some Fire Emblem and Xenoblade Chronicles X in Early 2016 friends. I truly appreciatethe support.

Any artist interested in having their artwork on PureNintendo.com or in PNM can contact me at Kaelyn@purenintendo.com. Submit fan art, sculptures, baked goods, comics, etc. If the theme is ‘Nintendo’ we want to see it! You could be the next Pure Nintendo featured artist! Also to see artwork from artists featured in our magazine, PNM, please head to PureNintendo.com/magazine to subscribe! Thanks for reading.

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Hello! My name is Kaelyn, and I LOVE Nintendo! I can’t remember a time when I didn’t play video games. Growing up with 3 older brothers it was hard to avoid them. Nintendo was always something that put me in a good mood, or taken me away when I needed a break from reality. My favorite series is the Legend of Zelda! I’ve always been into drawing Nintendo characters and seeing other people’s video game themed art. I have a dream of one day meeting the great Shigeru Miyamoto, and one day working for Nintendo (Don’t we all).

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